Rachel Reeves: I stand here today to honour a friend and a colleague. Along with shock, anger and grief, I have very many fond memories of Jo. Jo and I knew each other for around 10 years. I have known her husband Brendan for longer than that: we first met at a Labour student conference about 18 years ago, and it was through Brendan that I first met Jo.
I remember Jo and Brendan coming round for dinner at my and my husband’s house in London and our visiting them on their boat—first in Ladbroke Grove  and later in Wapping. I remember worrying that I  had drunk too much wine early in the evening, until  I realised that it was the boat that was swaying and  not me.
I remember talking with Jo about her future shortly after I became an MP. She was thinking about standing for Parliament and spent a day shadowing me in my constituency of Leeds West, talking to constituents about their problems, campaigning with local party members and attending meetings. By the end of the day, a lot of people were not sure who was the MP and who was doing the shadowing. Jo had a way with people—a way of relating to people from all walks of life. She had a real way of doing that.
Jo’s main hesitation about a parliamentary career was her young family. She worried, as many of us do, about whether she could be a great MP and a great mum at the same time. But when the opportunity came up to represent her home seat of Batley and Spen, Jo felt a special responsibility to step up and do what she could for the place where she was born, grew up and went to school—the place that Jo called home.
Jo wanted to make the world fairer, more equal, more tolerant and more generous. We all have better instincts and deepest fears. Jo appealed to our better instincts—our sense that, as she said in her maiden speech, what we have in common is greater than what divides us.
On Friday morning, less than 24 hours after Jo was killed, I sat in a coffee shop in Batley just a few minutes away from where Jo had been murdered. A woman came over to me and said that she had not known Jo, but that Jo’s death had made her want to be a bit more like her—a better person, a better mother, a better daughter, a better wife. It is ironic that, having travelled to some of the most damaged, war-ravaged places in the world, Jo died so near to her home. But she died doing the job she loved, in the place she loved, representing the people she loved. Her mum and Dad said to me that Jo would not have changed a thing. She lived the life she wanted to live. And yet, in her Mum’s words:
“She had so much more that she could have done”.
Jo was struck down much too soon. So it now falls on all our shoulders—the woman I met in a Batley coffee shop, Jo’s friends, MPs, all of us—to carry on Jo’s work: to combat and guard against hatred, intolerance and injustice and to serve others with dignity and love. That is the best way we can remember Jo and all she stood for.
But lastly, let me say this. Batley and Spen will go on to elect a new MP. But no one can replace a mother.

Stephen Doughty: In a tale of another Yorkshire tragedy that led to action and hope in the midst of sadness, we are told:
“The flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire. Every stage of their growth has its own beauty, but the last phase is always the most glorious.”
And it was glorious, Jo.
I was in awe of Jo. To be honest, I was always a bit envious. She was energetic, brave, dynamic, fit, beautiful and passionate. I cannot ever recall seeing her sad, negative or without hope. She once told me, in a one-to-one meeting as my manager at Oxfam, that she did not do touchy-feely, that I was being too emotional, that we needed to “get on with it” and sort out the campaign we were working on.
Jo believed in building bridges. She was fiercely Labour to her core, but when we thought our party was on the way out of government, she knew there were bigger things at stake. We had to reach out to others: we had to convince them of the case for tackling global poverty and for standing up for civilians in conflict and crisis and for women and girls. She was never satisfied  with platitudes. She wanted action. We have all been overwhelmed over the last few days with just how many lives she touched, from the refugee camps of Darfur to the mountains of Pakistan, but she was not some do-gooder jetting in to hand out alms. She wanted to know why, who was responsible and what we could do about it.
Jo had a remarkable mind and an incredible ability  to multi-task. I once met her to go to lobby some very senior officials in the Foreign Office about various crises. She turned up, typically, in a rush with her climbing kit hanging out of her bag. We sat on the floor in King Charles Street, where she then jumped straight into reading a briefing. She knew exactly what the key points were within minutes and then delivered the crucial information to the decision makers with utter confidence  and assuredness. It was brilliant. That brilliance was universally felt by all those she worked with. Moira described her as a
fearless, compassionate professional with such an impish streak.”
Vicky said that Jo had smarts and spirit. Conor, who worked closely with her, said that she taught him:
“how to get stuff done … with passion and professionalism”.
Our friend Ben, who spent a famous night on a mountain with her in Pakistani Kashmir, reminded our friends in recent days that everyone assumes that in NGOs people must all be really kind. He said:
“But the truth is we are not ... we can be vain, arrogant and mean… not Jo. Not just did everyone like Jo. More impressively Jo liked everyone. She was furious at injustice … but saw no one as a permanent enemy, and everyone as a potential ally.”
Though Jo was kind, she was a steely edged campaigner. Our friend and colleague Phil Bloomer said that she was
“one of the most kind, caring and committed people I have had the privilege to know … but she could also make herself a right royal pain in the back-side if she profoundly disagreed with you: a lesson many political leaders learnt too late, and to their cost.”
He reflected on Jo’s years influencing Peter Mandelson when she headed Oxfam’s Brussels office at a young age. He had to quickly adapt his approach, But most of all, Phil hit the mark. He said:
“Jo loved justice ... Jo loved Love”.
Adrian, our friend, told me of the time he saw Jo just a few months ago over a sandwich. He told me that he
“saw again the bravery and determination as she figured out how to hold feet to the fire—in her own party as well as her opponents—over Syria and the good we failed to do.”
Our close mutual friend and campaigner Kirsty summed Jo up perfectly for me. She said that Jo:
“never just asked ‘what do you think?’ always ‘what should we do’. This is what we should do. Act. Love. Unite.”
That was the Jo I knew. Kind, caring, passionate, principled, thoughtful—an intellect, but most of all focused on doing for others, not just being for ourselves.